The Woes of Stanley
by mabelreid
Summary: It must be hard to be a Guardian Angel... It must be even more difficult to be Dr. Reid's Guardian Angel. One Shot Parody No pairings Reid-Centric


_**A/n hello all... Here's something that's been going around in my head for a few days. Never fear, I am working on my other stories, but the muse wouldn't let me alone till I wrote this. She is completely out of control. Anyway... this is a one shot and a parody, so enjoy. I hope you laugh or at least smile.**_

_**Disclaimer: See my profile**_

Darryl's hands were shaking. He was a Guardian Angel Second Class and had worked hard for five centuries to get to that point. He refused to spend another five hundred years getting to First Class. Everyone on his original recruitment team had been promoted. He was the only one that was still Second Class. He was going to handle this latest problem with grace and finesse. He wasn't going to let a Fourth Class Angel keep him back. It was the wrong attitude, but that Angel tried everyone's patience!

The hallway to the boss's office was pure white, just like everything else in heaven. Although he was sure that the Big Guy knew everything they thought… It didn't stop him from wishing for just a little bit of color for variety.

The door ahead of him bore the title: Office of Stephen, Dept. of Guardian Angels. His office hours were posted on the door under his name. There was another notice that said "Knock, Please!" Darryl wiped his shaking and sweaty hands on his white robe, and knocked.

"Enter…" A booming voice said.

He entered, and stood in front of the white desk. The room was huge, with file cabinets lining the walls and in rows behind the angel that sat at the desk. Stephen was very tall and muscular with blond hair and piercing blue eyes. His wings were very large and flared out from behind his back like a huge eagle.

Darryl waited till the boss man put down his ostrich feather pen and looked up at the trembling man in front of his desk.

"What is it Darryl?" He snapped out. "I've got to finish this requisition for one hundred thousand new pairs of wings. I have twelve thousand new trainees in this week, and the Man himself has called a staff meeting. What could you have to say that is more important than all that?"

Darryl swallowed and remembered that he was up for promotion in twenty years. He looked his boss in the eye and said.

"You have to do something… Stanley is refusing to go to work. He says he can't take it anymore. He said he wants to be reassigned or he'll do something drastic."

Stephen's eyebrows came together and he glowered at the shaking angel in front of him. "Stop being so over dramatic… What could he possibly do that's drastic?"

"He's already broken the rules. He turned off his charge's alarm clock and locked him into his apartment. His key won't work to let him out when he does wake up and his phone won't work either." Darryl said very fast.

"He what…" The large angel shouted and leaped out of his chair.

"He said he can't take it anymore. He said that taking care of his charge is too much work."

"Oh it can't be that bad. In my day I was a rookie in charge of looking after Caesar."

Darryl wisely kept his mouth shut and his eyes on the desk. It wouldn't do to point out how that assignment had ended.

"Who's this impossible charge," Stephen asked?

"Oh… ah, just a minute," He pulled a note book out of his robes and opened it. "It's file number: 3,500, 347,694."

Stephen simply held out one hand and after a minute a file appeared there from nowhere. He opened it and his face got red, the only color in all the unrelieved white.

"Where is Stanley…?" He roared.

--

Stanley was sitting on a remote cloud formation with his head in his hands. The boss was on his way… He could feel it in his bones. He should be at work right now, but he couldn't face another day watching that young man dodge disaster again and again.

"Stanley…" A booming voice roared behind him.

He snapped up to attention despite his headache and backache. Angels weren't supposed to get body aches. They were immortal beings, so it had to be his charge's fault that he was in pain. The young man didn't know how to stay out of trouble.

"Y-yes sir…" He stuttered.

"What's this I hear about you locking up your charge?"

"Well… I - I ah… I can't take it anymore." He yelled, deciding to throw caution to the wind. "Look at my hair… half of I pulled out, and the other half fell out on it's own. Look at my wings." He did something that looked an awful lot like a dance they used to call the "twist," and his wings slid all over his back.

"I've lost a ton of weight and my wings don't fit anymore. What am I supposed to do?"

Stephen placed a fatherly arm around Stanley and they sat down on a fluffy cloud. "Look, you've been under a great deal of stress. I understand, but it can't be that bad."

Stanley popped up to his feet again and began to pace the cloud. "How can you say that? You've read my reports. You know how much trouble he is."

Stephen stood and stepped in front of the younger Angel. "I know exactly who that young man is. He's a very special man. He's already done great good and is destined to do more. You have to be there to protect him."

"Permission to speak freely sir…"

"As always," Stephen had risen to his feet and was watching the young Angel pace with his arms flying around his head like a baby bird learning how to fly.

"Dr Reid gets into trouble by himself. It's not like accidents find him, he finds the trouble."

"True… He is a challenging charge." Stephen admitted, for he had seen the daily reports on this charge.

"That's got to be the understatement of the eon." Stanley said very sarcastically. Stephen wanted to laugh; he liked this Angel a lot. The kid reminded him of himself about two thousand years ago.

"May I show you something?"

Stephen nodded and Stanley waved his hand at the blank mist the surrounded them. A picture came up around them that were better and clearer than the best 3-D movie ever made. It flew around them as though they were in the middle of the action. The scene began with a black night sky, a farm house and a barn. The watched a tall young man with brown hair, hazel eyes that looked like chocolate, and limbs that appeared to have stopped getting along with each other in puberty. There was a beautiful young woman next to him with blond hair and blue eyes. They were arguing and their guardian angels were observing, but not interfering. There was another Stanley next to the young man and next to the blond woman was a red haired female Angel with green eyes and a face that said, "Don't mess with me!"

Then the two of them separated and the young man disappeared. The scene suddenly froze as though a pause button had been hit on a TV remote.

"You see… he just runs off and gets kidnapped by a lunatic that claims to be Rafael among others."

"Oh… I wonder how the real Rafael took that." Darryl piped up and Stephen glared at him.

"Continue please," He ordered Stanley.

The scene changed and they watched a man called Tobias torture Dr. Reid. They also watched Stanley become more and more agitated as the drama progressed. Stephen became visibly angered when the young man forced Reid to choose a person to die. Stanley paused the action again, and turned back to his boss with a white face.

"I tried to tell him that it wasn't his fault."

"You know that a charge must be open in their heart to hear their angel. We can touch their hearts and minds, but we can't force them to listen. That's why humans get hurt and hurt each other all the time."

Stanley nodded slowly and began the action again. The saw his charge subjected to the poison of drugs, and more physical and psychological torture.

Stanley put his face in his hands when Reid "died." on the floor of that small little shack. Stephen and Darryl watched the other Stanley hover over his charge. Then a light appeared over the Angel's head and he seemed to be listening to a voice only he could hear. Then Tobias returned and Stanley knelt beside Reid and placed a hand on his head. Another golden light appeared and engulfed Reid from head to toe just before he opened his eyes and coughed.

The playback was paused and Stephen said. "I think I understand. All Angels love their charges, but you've become too attached to yours. I'll grant you one day off and I'll personally take over for you. I'll show you that even though bad things happen to all charges, it isn't all bad."

"But sir, you have your duties and -"

Stephen cut off Darryl with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I have a capable assistant."

"Yes sir… I'm just concerned that from what we we've seen and some of the reports I have seen for Dr Reid that it might be…"

Stephen stared down the shorter Angel and Darryl swallowed hard. "Are you trying to say that I can't handle one charge on my own?"

"No… Of course not, I'm just saying that we need you up here. I can find someone to replace Stanley for the day and -"

"I'm saving you the trouble. I'll be fine and I'll show Stanley that he can handle his assignment."

The two Angels looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. Stephen disappeared with a wave of his hand, leaving the billowing clouds and two doubtful Angels behind him

--

Stephen appeared in his charges apartment and with a wave of his hand, switched on the alarm, opened the door, and reactivated his phone. The alarm went off and his charge got up to go about his business of the day.

Everything was going great, and by noon Stephen was convinced that Stanley was over reacting a bit. Yeah… he'd read all the reports and knew that this young man got into some trouble, but he wasn't as bad as the Angel made him out to be.

He'd made himself invisible to the guardian angels of the other team members, just to see how they worked with their charges first hand. Most of them were doing wonderful jobs, but he was going to have to have a chat with the Angel that looked after Morgan. She was entirely too involved in her work and it went way beyond "loving," her charge. It appeared she was infatuated with him and that had to stop or he was reassigning her. He watched her fawn over Morgan and was about to make himself known when Agent Hotchner came into the bullpen declaring that they had a case that needed attention.

The next thing Stephen knew he was in a place called Omaha and he was watching Reid attempting to disarm a bomb on a door by himself. His partner Morgan had been knocked out by someone they called a un-sub and the rest of the team was spread out over the rest of the building dealing with their own bobby trap. Hotch had tried to get into the room and help, but another bomb had gone off, and the blocked the only door with debris.

Dr Reid was getting instructions on diffusing the bomb through his headset from the bomb squad. Stephen wasn't worried about getting hurt, he was immortal after all, but he was beginning to see why Stanley had pulled his hair out, literally.

Actually… Dr. Reid was doing pretty well. He'd only dropped the wire cutters three times and had avoided cutting the wrong wire twice. The big problem was that the timer was down to two minutes and counting. Stephen stepped closer to his charge. Morgan's angel was trying to wake him up faster by waving her wings over his face.

When the timer was at thirty seconds, Dr. Reid's hands were trembling badly and he was sweating big drops onto the dusty floor of the basement. Stephen was beginning to get very anxious and as he was wondering how he'd gotten into this predicament, his charge placed the wire cutter on the red wire instead of the green and nearly blew them all to pieces.

Stephen quickly froze time at four seconds and moved in to fix the problem. When time began again, Dr. Reid was cutting the right wire and the bomb was disarmed.

--

Darryl was leaving his daily report with Stephen's assistant and was just about to leave the office when Stephen appeared in front of him. The boss man's normally immaculate white robe was covered in dust and his hair was mussed. If it were possible for an Angel to age, Darryl would swear that his boss had put on three hundred years.

"Where's Stanley?" He asked before Darryl could comment.

"I don't know, probably off sleeping on some comfortable cloud somewhere. Would you like for me to find him?"

Stephen waved him off. "Don't bother, I'll find him myself."

He disappeared and his assistant said. "What happened to him?"

Darryl only shook his head and waved the other Angel away. "You don't want to know, trust me."

--

Stephen found Stanley sleeping peacefully on cloud nine. He really didn't have the heart to wake him. He understood a bit better now what the Angel went through every day with Dr. Reid. It was going to be hard to send him back, but Stanley was the right Angel for his charge.

"Stanley…"

The angel snorted and turned over. "Five more minutes…"

"Wake up Stanley… You're sleeping on the job."

Stanley opened one brown eye and then jumped to his feet at the sight of his boss. His robe was disheveled and his wings were hanging askew from his shoulders.

"Sir…" He snapped to attention.

"Relax…"

Stanley relaxed and took in his boss's appearance for the first time. "May I ask what happened sir?"

So Stephen told him about the case, and the bomb, and the near disaster he'd had to reverse. Stanley was nodding his head and smiling by the time his boss finished.

"I told you he was a tough one." Stanley said.

"Yes you did, but that doesn't mean I'm going to reassign you."

Stanley's heart sank. "But you said that you understand…"

"I do… I understand that Dr. Reid needs you to look after him. I have reviewed his file in its entirety while he was sleeping and you've done your job very well. You've kept him safe to do many great things and he will continue to do great things."

"I know… I've seen the best of him. He's needed in his job." Stanley agreed.

"Don't look so down Stanley. You're greatest weakness is your strength."

"I don't understand."

"You will when you learn to relax and just let life happen for your young charge."

Stanley pondered this for a minute and then went back to work after getting a better fitting pair of wings. Stephen had a long talk with Connie, Morgan's guardian angel and sternly warned her that she would be reassigned if she didn't resolve her crush on her charge. Connie left his office feeling very picked on and went to find her best friend Sarah, who was currently looking after Prince William and could relate.

--

Sixty years later…

Stanley was proudly receiving his promotion to Third Class after accompanying his most difficult charge, Dr. Reid, to the afterlife.

"So… You made it through a lifetime of watching over Dr. Reid. What did you learn?" Stephen asked the angel.

Stanley ducked his head and said. "I learned that I was too personally involved and that I had to just let him live his life. I understand why free will is so important to the Big Guy."

"Exactly…" Stephen said, slapping his employee on the back. "Now… why don't I introduce you to your next charge?


End file.
